Former coach release upheld

A former basketball coach who had been convicted for sexually molesting 36 boys on the island of Crete has been released from prison after a decision by the Misdemeanor Council of Grevena in northern Greece. Nikos Seiragakis had served just eight years of a maximum of 25 after being given a 400-year sentence by a court in 2013, which was upheld on appeal in 2016 when he was released from Grevena Prison on April 22 under the provisions of a new and more lenient criminal code passed by the previous government in 2019. However, he was arrested again shortly after for violating the restrictive conditions imposed on his release. But the council yesterday ruled that he did not violate these restrictive conditions for release, concluding that the conditions for his return to prison were not met.